


Mrs. Patrick

by TheSprog



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:07:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4660830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSprog/pseuds/TheSprog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short and not necessarily happy take on Nicola and Patrick's married life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mrs. Patrick

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Antonia_Forest_Fanworks_2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Antonia_Forest_Fanworks_2015) collection. 



Nicola was completing a rather involved set of EU forms with her usual competence, carefully not thinking of Patrick in the hawk garden. Rowan, after all, had left school at seventeen and run the farm for – not Giles, exactly, her mind sheered away from that conclusion – but at any rate for the good of the family. And she, Nicola, had suggested it. So it was only fair, she told herself ferociously, that she should help manage the estate for what was supposed to be her own family. Or lack thereof.   
Sternly she made herself consider the thought again; prodding at the bruise; but the entrance of her step-niece interrupted this ritual. “Karen says, come to lunch tomorrow,” offered Fob, without preliminary. 

Nicola tried not to look caught. Of course, one never knew when and if Patrick would turn up for his meals, but whenever he did, he liked her to be there. But Karen wasn’t, actually, the sister she’d least like to see at the moment, and the lunch would provide a buffer against the next time Ma suggested in a would-be casual way that they didn’t see enough of her these days. It was easier to say yes than to get into explanations.

It wasn’t as though she particularly wanted children – she had gone straight from a vague idea of six sons all in the Service to forming the background to Patrick’s assumption that of course he would have children, probably a dozen to line up like Russian dolls in the family chapel, as befitted such consciously traditional Catholics. Odd really, for an only child, and not one who had ever showed any enthusiasm for the young. 

***

Even on her gloomiest days, the sight of her home was a comfort. The orchard where Buster and The Idiot had coffee-housed, the mellow bricks of the shed where she had learned to care for the hawks, the chapel riotous with angels where she had first heard the Latin Mass, the ballroom where Patrick had first thought her beautiful… 

Still, you could pay too high a price, she thought, treacherously, as she trudged across the fields to the farmhouse which had been home to her eldest sister Karen for the last twelve years. And although she was one of the few Marlows who actually got on with Edwin, she couldn’t help thinking that Karen, at least, was unlikely to turn the conversation to brothers-in-law. 

Karen would never be a good cook, but with the proficiency born of long practice, she ladled a spoonful of mash, a pile of green beans, and a lamb chop onto each plate, and they sat down to eat. It sounded simply ghastly, thought Nicola, to be Head Girl, and win scholarships, and go up to Oxford in a blaze of glory, and then barely a year later marry a much older man with three recently bereaved step children requiring ginger pud and beetle costumes for the next twelve years. Much better, surely, to end a rather boring stint in the Wrens to settle down to marry your childhood sweetheart and live in his ancestral home surrounded by beloved horses and hawks. Nobody had thought that required any explaining whatsoever. At least then. 

Conversation throughout the meal was desultory until Fob announced firmly and with deep emphasis that she had something to do, and strode out of the room. Nicola made to follow her. 

“Nick?”

“Yes?”

“Just… wondering how you’re doing. I haven’t seen you much lately.”

“No, well, I’ve been busy.” 

“Mmm. Well, when Lawrie vanishes for unspecified periods we know she’s going to turn up on the doorstep one day with an entirely new hair colour, boyfriend, and urgent crisis that someone else had better sort out right away. With you, I’m not sure what to think. Especially given you only live a mile away.”

“I think she’s in London at the moment, isn’t she?” said Nicola, grasping at a new subject, though she hadn’t heard from Lawrie in she couldn’t remember how long. 

“It’s not as though everything has worked out perfectly for me, you know,” said Karen suddenly. “Here I am, aged thirty, kids grown up, no particularly useful qualifications, cooking and cleaning in a rural farmhouse until my elder brother has a better idea for the place.” 

“Kay!” Nicola was shocked. However much one might feel that way – and surely Karen had had ample time to do something about it since that day when she’d shown up at Trennels and announced her engagement – it was too awful for words to start actually saying so. 

“Well. Never mind then. All I’m trying to say is – you can talk to me. I might understand.”

“I don’t see how you possibly could,” replied Nicola tightly. “And anyway, there’s nothing to understand.” 

The message that Mr. Patrick had been in to lunch after all at least had the merit of driving the hurt on her sister’s face out of her mind. 

***

It amused Patrick, sometimes, to treat her with elaborate courtesy. Tonight was evidently not going to be one of those nights. It must have been past midnight when he came into the bedroom with a very hawkish look in his eyes. 

“Where were you?” 

Nicola briefly considered saying she had been into Colebridge, but realised she was too exhausted to make up a convincing story.

“I had lunch with Karen. It was last minute - it seems odd to keep refusing - and I thought you wouldn’t be in…” she tailed off. It was the endless explanations, more than anything, which wore you down. Always needing to produce reasons for things she had done out of lethargy or instinct or despair. 

“With Karen?”

“And Fob” she added hastily.

“And what, if it’s an askable question, did you talk about with Karen and, naturally, Fob?” 

Nicola cudgelled her brains for a plausible snippet of conversation. “Just… what might happen if Giles wants the place back.” Damn-blow-blast-and-bloody-hell, she thought, what possessed me to say that?

“Aren’t you lucky that doesn’t apply to you? You always wanted Mariot Chase, and now you’re stuck here. As you keep telling people.”

“You know I’ve never said that.” There was silence. 

His grip on her wrist tightened, and she was just deciding that she couldn’t stand it any longer when he suddenly let go. “By the way,” he said, dropping into airy unconcern, “I happened to bump into Claudie in town, so natch I invited her down here for a few days”

“Natch”, she repeated, striving to match his tone. “Do I know Claudie?”

“Claudie? I must have told you about her. She’s a French girl, a sort of au-pair we had in London.” He added, almost kindly, “No one really, mostly just a reaction to Gin.”

Nicola had imagined that she herself had been the reaction to Gin. Does he know, she wondered to herself, does he know he’s being a heel? How does he justify it to himself? Or does he think he’s being just as fine and gentlemanly as… as his father. The thought of what Helena Merrick might have to say at that point stopped her for a second. Perhaps she should channel a little more of her alarmingly untouchable mother-in-law these days. 

Patrick watched her narrowly for a few moments, then smiled slowly.

“Now, Mrs Merrick, I very much hope you’re not feeling tired.”

***

Nicola was unaccustomedly tired, that morning. A large pile of bills, a blocked up drain, a good clean of the library to stop Pat moaning about the dust, at least half a mile of fencing urgently requiring attention, and – oh damn – lunch and some kind of bedroom to prepare for this Claudie woman, suddenly loomed insurmountable. Nonsense, she told herself. Pull yourself together and bloody well get on with it. She had two clear hours before Patrick could have finished with the hawks. 

Hardly realising what she was doing, she walked over to the telephone.

“You’ve reached Clarissa, Sophia’s personal assistant” breathed a silky voice. She checked for a moment, startled.

“What?”, and then, as realisation hit her, “Oh, Lal!”


End file.
